The present invention pertains to the decoration of seasonal ornaments, and more particularly to a method of readily providing the outer surface of seasonal ornaments with a variety of surface decorations.
In the past, seasonal ornaments have usually been decorated by hand or through the utilization of conventional methods including the use of striping machines and silk screening machines. Neither of these known methods of decorating ornaments has been completely satisfactory, since silk screening not only requires the placement of the screen on the surface to be decorated, but also requires the application of pigments or paints which must be dried in order to avoid smearing. Further, when utilizing multicolor decorations, it is necessary to accurately register subsequent screens on the ornament which may be rather difficult due to the ornament's compound surface. Finally, the decorations which could be applied by striping machines were materially limited to multi-width bands or the like.
It is known in the prior art to apply shrink film bands about the cylindrical walls of bottles and cans for labeling, strengthening and sealing such containers. However, the shrink films of the container art have merely replaced the older adhesively-applied paper labels. That is, in the container art, there has merely been a substitution of a printed shrink film label for a printed paper label, rather than a new concept of decoration. Such labeling art has not been concerned with the problems encountered in decorating a fragile spherical body such as a Christmas tree ornament wherein the application of the printed decoration must be carefully controlled for both aesthetic and mechanical reasons so that the orientation and aethetics of the decoration are pleasing and so that the integrity of the frangible spherical body is preserved.
The present invention overcomes the problems encountered with the previously known methods of decoration, by utilizing a pre-decorated band which is placed on the ornament with a finished decoration, thus eliminating the problems of registration of colors and those inherent with the wet pigments of silk screening and striping machines. Further, since the band is pre-printed while in an easily handleable state, there is virtually no limit to the decoration which can be utilized, such as process printed designs including full color illustrations.